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schwit1 writes with this snippet from CNet: "Law enforcement representatives are planning to endorse a proposed federal law that would require Internet service providers to store logs about their customers for 18 months. ... Michael Brown, sheriff in Bedford County, Va., and a board member and executive committee member of the National Sheriffs' Association, is planning to argue that a new law is necessary because Internet providers do not store customer records long enough. 'The limited data retention time and lack of uniformity among retention from company to company significantly hinders law enforcement's ability to identify predators when they come across child pornography,' according to a copy of Brown's remarks. Any stored logs could, however, be used to prosecute any type of crime."

Sean Penn examines California in the early eighties, and a number of innocent people who spent a combined total of over 50 years in jail in the name of prosecuting "child pornography". It is an extremely disturbing movie. I can see why IMDb doesn't have it in their database.

The film came out in 2008, before Obama took office, so I don't really understand your point. Perhaps you should have instead pointed out the sort of things that the Clinton administration was doing (like turning popular TV shows into propaganda vehicles).

The part that bothers me about this is the unreasonable double-standard. Law enforcement typically keeps records of their phone calls and radio traffic for between about 1 to 2 years, which is usually driven by statues of limitations. After that, the records are gone. The reason is simple - they often need to keep that data for liability issues such as when someone sues the police for misconduct. They purge that data after that retention period for exactly the same reasons the ISPs do not want to hang onto it - having it means they become responsible for it and becomes more of a problem than the data is worth.

As a public agency, law enforcement agencies have clear retention period policies, as well as policies outlining exactly who can and cannot access that data, in order to serve the public. As private entities, why should the ISPs be held to some arbitrary standard outlined by an outside party? Honestly, if an ISP wants to purge that data after 6 months (or even less) to serve *their* public - their paying customers - let them! The convenience store down the street isn't required to keep a minimum amount of surveillance video in case someone does something shady in the bathroom. They keep that video to protect themselves and their business from people that want to do harm. When police are called, the video is shared voluntarily because it's in their best interests to do so.

The only thing I would be in favor of is requiring ISPs to simply define a data retention policy and make it public to everyone, including the law enforcement community. The ISPs can then live and die by the policy they set for themselves and law enforcement will know exactly how long they have before that information is purged. I would also suggest that once an ISP is made aware that a warrant for certain information is coming, the ISP should retain the relevant data regardless of the policy. They don't necessarily have to share it until they receive the warrant, but the request alone should trigger a temporary hold on the data for a set period of, say, 60 days. This is no different than how law enforcement handles their data retention when a request is made of them, so ISPs should be treated the same way.

I'm not sure what I would want the penalties to be if any of the data retention policies were violated (purged early or accessed inappropriately), but it should fit the severity and scope of the violation and be defined in actual law.

Child porn is a scourge on society, and I strongly support any reasonable means of stomping on the bastards behind it, but we have to stop allowing any new law being justified on the basis of "Think of the children!" and then going on to allow that law to be used for anything beyond it's original intended scope.

The problem I have with this data retention proposal is that it is the digital equivalent of being required to keep a GPS tracker on everyone that records your every movement and keep records of those movements for 18 months, so the authorities can check if you were at the scene of any crimes that may occur.

It would not be acceptable to track people physically in this way with no cause, at least not in my country - so it should not be allowable to track them in the same way online either, without some kind of warrant or reason.

As long as this information is recorded and kept, it lies open to abuse by hackers who gain unauthorised access to the information, and also mis-use by those in authority, who use the information outside of the original scope for which it was intended (ie. to stop child porn)

Child porn is a scourge on society, and I strongly support any reasonable means of stomping on the bastards behind it [...]

I would disagree. "Child abuse is a scourge on society", yes. Video evidence? That's merely evidence. Evidence should never be illegal, it should be allowed to be presented to the court or other authorities with no fear of being used against one, so that one can help bring the actual criminals to justice (the people that injure the children). I'm somewhat surprised that I need to state that video evidence of a homicide is not illegal to possess...

Unless it's purely artificial, any Child Porn that involves real children is abuse. If I ever saw someone performing sexual intercourse on a young adolescent, I swear to God, I will fucking kill the predator with my bare hands, and stand trial by jury knowing I did the right thing.

>>If I ever saw someone performing sexual intercourse on a young adolescent, I swear to God, I will fucking kill the predator with my bare hands, and stand trial by jury knowing I did the right thing.

So if you saw a pair of 16-year olds having sex... you'd kill both of them? Or just one? In which case, which one would you pick? Yes, it's illegal in a lot of states for two consenting teens to have sex with each other.

If you saw a teen photographing him or herself with a camera, would you kill them or j

If I ever saw someone performing sexual intercourse on a young adolescent, I swear to God, I will fucking kill the predator with my bare hands, and stand trial by jury knowing I did the right thing.

I think this nicely demonstrates why child porn remains such a popular subject despite being very nearly nonexistent: it gives people an excuse to RRRAAAGGGE!!!!! and make death threats and feel proud of such behaviour.

I don't think we will ever get away from the "think of the children" mentality, so what we need to do is use it to our advantage. Come up with a good argument as to why recording this data harms them.

It seemed to work when tracking kids for targeted advertising and SMS spam. I think it had a hand in the reduction in pornographic email spam too, once there were laws in place to punish people sending it to children.

I am confused as to how the failure of the ISPs to keep a log of their users' Internet usage could cause health problems for their users (or others). This law is not intended to protect the general populace. It is intended to allow law enforcement to prosecute people after the fact.
The laws and regulations governing food safety are not in any way equivalent to laws covering the ISPs retaining a record of their customers' activity.

The law is for data mining, fishing expeditions, trial by innuendo and guilt by association.

All that will happen, is people will add in random multiple internet connection attempts at random intervals within broad ranges of likely address hits, to confuse the record of their internet access and to flood out ISP databases.

It would add negligible additional traffic to seek out tens of thousands random web sites each day and not waiting for download content before moving on, just registering the connecti

I feel like this analogy is the best shot any ISP would have at combating the law, or rather, unequal treatment under the law.

I honestly wonder, given that corporations are considered "persons" in the eyes of the government, if they can claim that discrimination by the nature of the service provided is unconstitutional. It would be an interesting approach. It seems the use of the first section of the 14th amendment may actually be a viable approach to this argument. My logic chain is as follows: If a law

I'm thinking that gov't counsel would note that retention of garbage could: a) present a public health hazard; b) incur high costs for safe retention, which would unduly burden all users of the service; c) present chain-of-custody issues that would be prohibitively expensive to avoid and that are only minimally presented in the retention-of-bits scenario. Hence, data retention by ISPs would not unduly burden them or their users. Pretty easy to distinguish between the costs of retaining bits vs. costs of re

We keep garbage a lot longer than six months. It's not very well-organized, though. On the other hand, it would be relatively trivial to put RFID tags in trashbags (fire 'em in there at collection time) which would make it possible (if non-trivial) to find them later.

Would you want the government following you everywhere, taking notes of everything you do, all with the intent that they can later prosecute you for pretty much anything that they can come up with? And this extends to private companies and interests who should never have access to such data (RIAA, MPAA) now able to get it through the courts because it now exists in the first place? That's what this is all about.

It becomes an argument for anonymous browsing on everything you do, until they figure out how to either track, or ban, that too.

Every time there is a push to reduce our privacy rights online, it's ALWAYS in the guise of child pornography. I mean seriously, how serious of a problem is it? Why does law enforcement need to know I go to slashdot.com daily or watch porn every other day? Why don't they just store data for child pornography sites?

All federal and state employees should be video monitored during work hours, with executive employees (e.g. governors and representatives) video monitored 24-7. Records should be kept for 5 years, and accessible to the public on demand.

This is necessary to prevent government employees from raping children. Please, let's think of the children.

Why does law enforcement need to know I go to slashdot.com daily or watch porn every other day? Why don't they just store data for child pornography sites?

The argument is that by the time they locate child pornography sites and gain access to the server logs, it is too late to arrest past visitors because their IP addresses have changed and the subscriber data is not stored long enough. Now, anyone who is capable of thinking for themselves recognizes that:

The worst offenders are frequent visitors, and so there would be traces of recent activity

The really dangerous people who produce child pornography for years on end put serious effort into hiding their I

The only dangerous people who produce child pornography won't visit those sites because they already have it on local media

There, fixed it for you. If we spent as much time going after the producers as we do prosecuting thoughtcrime, we might be able to actually prevent child abuse, instead the police as always go after the non-harmful crimes rather than those who are actually abusing the children.

It's a shame you posted anonymous. I agree with you. I would be interested to see the statistics of how many people who are in jail for possessing child porn have ever had sex with a child. I would like to compare that statistic to people who are in jail for having sex with a child and see how many of them have ever looked at child pornography.
People can derive pleasure from things without wanting to participate in those things, or even being disgusted at the idea of doing those things. Some people like to

In the black and white world of "you're either with us or against us", you are either for this bill and against child pornography or you are against this bill and for child pornography. If you try bringing some sanity into it, they will pound that point and make it seem you're eluding it.

It'd be like starting an attack on this bill with "Are you in favor of Soviet-style mass surveillance of ordinary citizens?" and you can hear the question is loaded as all hell. It just turns into a game of piling up the most bad stuff on the other side.

They don't want to. Its more profitable to keep the kiddie porn sites going. You bust a site and get one conviction you bust all the viewers and get a nice truck load of new prision stock for gov and privatelly owned prisons.

Every time there is a push to reduce our privacy rights online, it's ALWAYS in the guise of child pornography. I mean seriously, how serious of a problem is it? Why does law enforcement need to know I go to slashdot.com daily or watch porn every other day? Why don't they just store data for child pornography sites?

See, I would phrase that as "So law enforcement is saying they are incompetent and utter failures at actually preventing children from being exploited in the production of child porn?" or "Why isn't law enforcement going after the source of this scourge?" or "Is Michael Brown, sheriff in Bedford County, Va., and a board member and executive committee member of the National Sheriffs' Association turning a blind eye to the production of child porn?"

Not because it's true, or those questions are at all logical, but because you need to fight fire with fire. Seriously. Someone should write an opinion piece and go on Fox news and say "By taking this route, Michael Brown, sheriff in Bedford County, Va., and a board member and executive committee member of the National Sheriffs' Association is essentially giving up on child molesters. This government intrusion into internet providers' business does nothing to stop children from being sexually exploited. It is his job to stop children from being sexually exploited, not tell small businesses how to to run themselves. This will only increase internet fees and cost American jobs, and will do nothing to stop child molesters from murdering your children."

Maybe tighten that up a little. It's a fine line between the type of crazy that those people believe and the type of crazy that even those people realize is crazy.

"By taking this route, Michael Brown, sheriff in Bedford County, Va., and a board member and executive committee member of the National Sheriffs' Association is essentially giving up on child molesters. This government intrusion into internet providers' business does nothing to stop children from being sexually exploited. It is his job to stop children from being sexually exploited, not tell small businesses how to to run themselves. This will only increase internet fees and cost American jobs, and will d

how serious is drunk driving? 'they' will have you believe its the scourge of the earth. that they HAVE to institute roadblocks and manditory searches (even mandatory blood-taking!) in order to 'keep society safe'.

I'm nearly half a century old (goml). I'm not sure I've seen more than 1 or 2 really drunk dangerous people on the road in my life (and yes, I've been to college, etc.) its just not the problem the authorities would have you believe. not widespread enough to PANIC over like we do. you can't

And the extent of this sub-thread demonstrates how easy it is to redirect attention from the issue.

Its NOT about child porn. Its about downloading copyrighted content and to a lesser degree, tracking offshore financial activity. The child porn motive is just a straw man that's morally repugnant to argue against.

"What? You object to the surveillance? So you must be in favor of kiddie porn. Pervert! By the way, what's this Swiss bank account we see you logging into?"

Child porn is one of those things that can make someone who is otherwise reasonably logical go in to total witch hunt mode. So if you go to them and say "We want your ISP to log everything you do so that we can examine it if we think you've committed any crime, drug use, tax evasion, etc." The person says "Hell no! You don't need that kind of access." However when they say "We want your ISP to log everything you do so that we can catch people who look at child porn," and the person says "Ya! Burn the pedos!

It is just one of those things that is extremely effective in America (terrorism is nearly as effective). You claim that you need to do X to prevent child pornography and people will give up rights that they wouldn't if you claim it is needed to prevent other kinds of crimes.

Not just in America. This [youtube.com] is what Brits have to say on the subject.

1. All speed traps are video recorded and offer the ability to clock the car with a stopwatch to verify it was actually speeding. Sort of like reverse VASCAR.

2. Every interaction with a police officer will be recorded with video and audio--they're doing this in Burnsville, MN. Thing is we need to have these videos recorded to WORM discs and those need to be made available to the public in every single situation without charge.

3. Anytime a law enforcement officer tells a lie to scare someone they can be sued.

---

I could continue but it's pointless. It's easier for the ISPs to simply tell them 'no'.

All officer cars have automatic public speed recordings and must have a case number assigned to each incident that a cop was either speeding or using their lights to run a red alight. Also dash cam recording, so we can see if they were warning someone or just being impatient.
Heck if the people can be logged, let's start monitoring and logging all government activities too, and assign an international comittee to report any suspicious government acitvities, and habbits. So we can figure their agenda and da

1. Better yet, remove the "speed limit" laws entirely. They're pure profit-making laws - if it was anyone other than the government, it would be called rent-seeking. You can already cover the thing you're supposedly preventing via reckless driving charges. This could arguably make things even safer - most traffic [i]already[/i] does 5-15 mph over the speed limit, such that driving "legally" is actually more dangerous than keeping up with traffic. Maybe enforce limits in special areas - school zones, high-pe

You're doing it wrong:1. All speed traps are video recorded to make sure that there are no children being kidnapped for child pornography2. Every interaction with a police officer to be recorded in case the said officer was going to abuse a child3. Anytime a law enforcement officer tells a lie to scare someone they can be sued, in case they lie to a minor.

See what I did there? The only way to support your cause it to tie it to the "think of the children" clause.

4. Anytime a public elected or powerful appointed offical tells a lie to scare someone they can be imprisoned for manditory min of 15 years. no parole in the meantime. (and they have to be forced to listen to country music the entire time.)

Every time a cop tells a lie to scare somebody the "tree of liberty" needs refeshed. They already have a badge and gun with ridiculous low standards for "properly" using either.. It's time for Sun Tso or Machavelli style discipline in the ranks.

For all those right wing Bible thumpers out there conviction of a crime in the Bible took two witnesses... The only punishment for lying was molten lead poured down your throat... Let's hold BOTH sides to the same book at least!!!

Any security claim that is solely motivated by child pornography I regard as bogus. Been to that well a few too many times.

One is certainly left to ask just how many child pornographers Michael Brown, sheriff in Bedford County, Va. has successfully prosecuted in his own law enforcement career? One is left to wonder if it is even a crime he pursues normally?

now, how do we get the rest of the dumb-fucks who live in this country to see that?

I don't have an answer to that. I see that you and I understand, but people like us don't run things. THAT is the problem. its power-hungry assholes that run the country (not talking about R's or D's; they're all about the same in this regard.)

now, how do we get the rest of the dumb-fucks who live in this country to see that?

Report child pornography possession en masse, in middle class communities. When the middle class sees its sons, fathers, uncles, and friends being thrown in prison and treated like the scum of the earth, things might change.

Disclaimer: The above suggestion may be illegal. Do not try this at home.

now, how do we get the rest of the dumb-fucks who live in this country to see that?

In a properly functioning government, it would be irrelevant what the 'dumb-fucks' think because the government wouldn't have enough power to screw things up so badly.

Alas, it appears that it's impossible to have a Government-type organization that doesn't spiral out of control eventually. Time to use modern technology to make that 1700's model obsolete. Remember, Jefferson only called for the People "to provide new Guards

In a properly functioning government, it would be irrelevant what the 'dumb-fucks' think because the government wouldn't have enough power to screw things up so badly.

The government has however much power the majority of citizens is willing to give it. Your precious constitution is not a roadblock, but more like a stump in the road - it can still be amended given sufficiently many votes. And if supermajority are dumb-fucks (on any particular subject, not necessarily in general), then you get what you get.

Is there anything stopping potential criminals from just popping down to the local library or internet cafe?

Hell, whenever I would pull a practical joke on a friend back in college, I never logged into a machine from the computer in my dorm - made it too easy for them to find out who'd been messing with their account. I'd just go down to the local computer lab and do it from there.

Or does this law mandate that every computer require a valid driver's license to be swiped before logging on?

most criminal are lazy and stupid.Also, it will still give them info about the rare criminal that actually thinks something through.That alone can be very helpful in an era where attacks can come from anywhere.

Why don't we just save some time and just arrest all the Democrats and civil libertarians as clearly they are opposed to incarcerating child molesters without a proper trial.

The Democrats? Last time I checked, they were ALSO big proponents of unchecked government power. Let's put it this way, they had almost every branch of government under their sway for at least a few months. What liberties did they even try to restore during that time?

Is there anything stopping potential criminals from just popping down to the local library or internet cafe?

It's probably difficult to jerk off in an internet cafe or local library. Not to mention people that may look over your shoulder. Not that I support this bullshit law or anything. It obviously has little to nothing to do with child pornography and everything to do with giving cops more of their favorite thing: power.

Or does this law mandate that every computer require a valid driver's license to be swiped before logging on?

Its actually the same problem with intelligence agencies and heck the "information age" in corporations. We have more data that we have to look at. There's always more data. So we need more computers and more employees.

Its not bad for the economy in a sense. But it usually works out better for the firms that end up getting the contracts to add the computers. And in the case of government, great for the careers for those in departments that are trying to make themselves feel more important by getting more mo

What kind of logging are they going to expect to come from all the VPS's out there? I have two VPS's, each of which I use for two different domains I own. I also manage a third VPS for a non-profit group. Unless the ISP starts to log every single bit of data that comes into and out of my VPS this law is going to be absolutely useless to dealing with traffic that goes through a VPS.

There's no way in hell I'm going to forward the syslogs, mail logs, etc. of my linux hosts to an ISP for them to archive for

It says they must store for "at least 18 months the temporarily assigned network addresses the service assigns to each account, unless that address is transmitted by radio communication"--language that amounts to a huge and unusual exception for wireless carriers.

Mandatory data retention is a current issue in Europe, too. There's a EU directive that requires member countries to implement data retention laws. It's one the biggest public issues in German telecommunication politics (way bigger than net neutrality, for example) and one of the biggest public issues in the overall field of privacy.

when this law comes in it'll be way more profitable to set up backdoors and use other peoples computers to visit specially set up child porn sites so that the ISP keep the logs and then sends them a nice message that say they $50K or you get reported for visiting child porn site.

In the black and white world of "you're either with us or against us", you are either for this bill and against child pornography or you are against this bill and for child pornography. If you try bringing some sanity into it, they will pound that point and make it seem you're eluding it.

Previously, the big excuse for surveillance was "terrorism". Now that a SEAL team not only killed bin Laden, but captured all his records, it's clear that he hadn't been accomplishing much besides hiding out for years. So the surveillance lobby has to fall back on kiddie porn again.

The biggest current threats to the United States are the Mississippi River system, the Federal deficit, and white-collar crime in the financial sector.

Of course law enforcement wants yet another invasion on the public's rights!

If law enforcement had its way every person would have a surgically attached collar with GPS, microphones and cameras, and tampering it would trigger explosives (which could also be set off remotely at any time--without a judge's order, of course--by any LEO).

This is a really bad idea. A data breach WILL happen, i can gaurantee it. In fact, some with sinister motives will want to get that data, those of major corporations may want to get information on people who are trying to form a union, for instance, or a corrupt government official may want to get information on people critical of him.

What also concerns me is how this sort of thing will likely simply destroy privacy altogether and as well the system of search warrants may be rendered ineffective. Search w

The element that makes an individual's actions the actions of government is duty. If you have a duty to take a governmental action, and you're in good faith performance of that duty, your actions are the actions of government. So you don't have to be a government employee to be an agent of government. You could be a government contractor (duty incurred by contract), a volunteer with the consent of government (duty incurred by less formal agreement) or even a conscript, forced to take a government action aga

The government cannot force you to do something that the government itself is not constitutionally allowed to do. Any attempt to do so by legislation would be unconstitutional, not a law, never was, IMVHO.

Do you mean, like, bail out Wallstreet and their bankster buddies, or sending needed money to rogue governments to be our friends. Did you have any say in these discussions? Is your imput even necessary? What about the missing 14 billion dollars that went to the auto industry, is that important? I hope you are still working, have your home, not in some shitty foxhole in some G-D forsaken foreign land wondering if all the bullshit raining down on you fron an unseen enemy is worth it.

A Republican aide to the House Judiciary committee, who did not want to be identified, said the bill exempts wireless providers because their networks are designed in such a way that IP addresses are assigned to multiple users or accounts and they are "not technologically capable of retaining the type of data that law enforcement needs because that's not how their system works."

(emph mine).

so....

the ones they most want to catch will probably be aware of what avoidance tactics to take - and will migrate to where its 'safe'!

you've just dragnetted the whole population and missed who you SAY you are after.

of course, its a ruse. you are after US, not the bad guys, but the good guys, mostly. you want to be able to pull up dirt on anyone, on command, to use as it suits you.

I am surprised that there are not many comments about the amount of storage that would need. If EVERY packet that [asses through an ISP in the US was kept for 18 months. How many storage would be needed. Of course, the ISP would pass that extra cost on to the consumer. Internet connections in the US are expensive enough without adding the cost of that.

By the way, It is my opinion you can't convince the "think of the children" crowd on legal matters. They don't care if a proposed law might be unconsti